Calibrating the cosmic distance ladder using gravitational-wave observations

Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) are one of the preeminent distance ladders and precision cosmology probes due to their intrinsic brightness which allows them to be observable even in the distant Universe. However, a correct understanding of their progenitors and physics relies on the accuracy with which one measures the distances to their host galaxies or galaxy clusters. This knowledge of the distance to SNe Ia host galaxies requires calibration with Cepheids whose role as standard candles is still under debate. Gravitational waves (GWs) from compact binary coalescences, on the other hand, are self-calibrating standard candles, i.e., measuring GWs from coalescing binaries allow one to directly measure their distances without using the cosmic distance ladder. Therefore, GWs could be used to validate the distance to the galaxy or the cluster in which a supernova has already occurred. We investigate when in future it could be possible for GWs to calibrate distances to already known SNe Ia. We compute error in the distance measurement using various networks of second and third generation GW detectors and show that a good enough accuracy can be achieved in future such that GWs will be able to calibrate distances to the local SNe Ia.